Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,112

a lopsided, boyish grin. “I have waited a long time to confess this, but I love you.”

Her anger gave way a smidge to pity. She knew what it was like to love someone and not have it returned. Or did she? If she could not trust what Talbot had told her, then maybe Asher did love her. Hope overflowed.

“Talbot,” she started, determined to gently dissuade him, but he held up a hand and frowned at her.

“Let me finish. I know what you’ll say. You are wed to my brother. You are good and honorable so, of course, you will say that, but he doesn’t deserve you. I deserve you.”

“I’m not such a prize, Talbot,” she said. “I have a horrid temper, and I am not very trusting apparently.”

“You trusted me,” he said.

“And you lied to me, I think,” she replied.

He set his hands near hers on the armrests and leaned forward until their faces were so close she noticed the color of his eyes for the first time. Talbot had blue eyes the color of a thundercloud. He shrugged. “I might have a little, but you were meant to be mine, and he stole you from me. Fair is fair.”

She frowned. “How was I meant to be yours?”

“When I defended you, you told me that I was the most honorable, the most dashing boy you’d ever known.”

She vaguely remembered the day. She’d been but a girl of eleven summers, and she had read a passage from one of her mother’s hidden Gothic novels, and the words had popped into her head. She had thought them better to say than what she had been truly thinking—that she was irritated that Talbot had defended her when she had wanted to defend herself. If only she’d been truthful! She had to be so now.

“Talbot, those were the silly words of a silly girl.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Those were words I clung to every time my father belittled me and when Carrington appeared and he was instantly my father’s shining son, the perfect son. I knew I could not let him court you and steal my chance with you, but he somehow managed to do so anyway. He stood up to Father when I never did. I both hate him and admire him for it.”

“Oh, Talbot.” She was both frightened and so saddened. “What did you do?”

“Many things, Guinevere. I did many terrible things to ensure I won you, that I won for once, that I showed my father I was the better son, but he never saw it.”

Whatever Talbot had done, it had not been for her. He might have told himself that, but it had been to prove something to his father. Blast the man! “Talbot—”

“I would have courted you, Guinevere, when Carrington left, but my father discovered what I had plotted with Elizabeth and Kilgore, and he threatened to disown me if I courted you, if I so much as showed you anything but polite interest when I happened to come across you in public gatherings. And he had men watching, believe me. I had to bide my time for when he died, and I redecorated this place into the home I hope we will share.”

That they would share? Did he think they’d live here together? That she would divorce Asher? What had he plotted with Kilgore and Elizabeth?

Then it struck her. The kiss! The kisses!

Oh, what utter fools she and Asher both were. And Kilgore! She was going to box his ears when next she saw him. But there was currently a much more pressing problem.

“How sad to live in such strife, Talbot. I’m so sorry.” And she was. She was livid and sorry and very anxious to leave. To go to Asher. To try to right things between them.

“It was sad,” he agreed, then reached out and stroked her hair.

She pushed his hand away. “Do not do that.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “Why? He should have trusted you once he won you, once you wed him, but all it took was a whisper here and an insinuation there, and my brother became sure you wanted Kilgore over him.”

Asher. Asher. She wanted to moan, but she pressed her lips together. Her husband was so strong, so proud, yet he carried deep scars of being unwanted by his father, and that had left him wary of exposing himself. She had not helped matters, either. Had he been on the verge of trusting her? She thought back to their week together